Beschreibung:

(Cuba) Manuscript set of memoranda on the topic of free workers imported to work in Cuba, regarding labor policies, licenses, etc. Place Published: Cuba Date Published: 1857-1859 Description: 20 leaves, handwritten in Spanish on both sides, plus 9 blank leaves at end. 21.8x16 cm (8½x6¼"), unbound, stitched together. Fascinating and revealing gathering of memos regarding questions about policies involving contract workers coming to Cuba in the late 1850s, titled "Expediente general sobre trabasadores libre" ("General file on free workers") in margin of first leaf. It was not uncommon at the time for clerks to make copies of memos on a particular topic and put them together to inform decision making. The early pages discuss who should pay these workers’ disembarkation fees and how much those fees should be. In one instance a Don Serapio Alguzgaray is writing as the Director of a company called apparently Development and Colonization to the Governor to ask permission to pay only 4 reales for each arriving worker. Later pages talk about who should pay for hospitalization of sick contract workers and what to do about those workers who ended up destitute and/or drunk hanging around in towns. The memos talk about irlandeses (Irish) workers, though at this time white English-speaking contract workers were often lumped together as Irish. On other pages they mention the policies applied to Spanish, Chinese, and Yucatecan contract workers as a comparison. A scholar in 19th century Cuban labor policies who assisted us in examining the memos commented that the "questions raised were common in the 19th [century] as more contract workers came to Cuba—who should pay their round-trip passage, their maintenance while in Cuba, what to do with those who finished their contracts or escaped their work sites. The last page ends with some notes in a different hand about the policies, though this part was difficult to read. I’m guessing these were the decisions about some of these questions. One says that the companies should pay the round trip, though I’m not sure whether they’re referring to the labor contractors or the employers." Condition: Paper browned, ink bleeding through, a few tears; about very good. Item#: 353241 Headline: Laws for "free" laborers in 19th cent. Cuba